


The Martians

by diner_drama



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Martian (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Space, Enemies to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:40:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23326408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diner_drama/pseuds/diner_drama
Summary: When a mission to Mars goes horribly awry, Steve Rogers is left for dead on the planet's surface, along with his least favourite person in the universe - Bucky goddamn Barnes.Ideally, Steve would not have chosen Barnes for his crew. Ideally, Steve would never have spent more than an hour with Barnes in his entirelifebecause the man wasinfuriating, no matter how well he filled out his space suit.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 170
Kudos: 366





	1. Sol 18

**Author's Note:**

> I mean, this is literally the plot of The Martian, only I made it gay.

  


"Cap, can you tell Barnes to stop wiggling his ass?" said Stark over the comms. "He's distracting me, and I'm on a mission critical task." Steve turned around, cleaning dust from his visor with his sleeve, to where Barnes was wiping down the solar panels and doing a little dance that managed to be strangely sensual - and completely unprofessional - despite his bulky space suit.

"I've never successfully persuaded Barnes to stop doing anything, Stark," he replied through gritted teeth, turning back to where he was staking out the ground for soil sample collection. "Eyes on your work."

"Get your mind out of the gutter," said Barnes, shaking his booty more forcefully. "This is my patented method for optimal solar panel cleansing procedure - it makes my movements more efficient _and_ gives me a full-body workout."

"Heaven forbid you skip leg day," murmured Romanoff dryly, the smirk evident in her voice even over the crackly helmet speakers. 

"If Barnes' thighs get any more muscular we're gonna have to let out his space suit," said Stark. "Bruce, can you use your tailoring expertise to accommodate the junk in Barnes' trunk?"

"I'm not that kind of materials specialist, but I can look into it," said Banner mildly.

"This is bordering on sexual harassment. As soon as we get back to Earth, I'm going straight to HR."

Inside the Habitat, Romanoff was monitoring the weather situation (with her feet up on the console, Steve assumed), Banner was analyzing rock samples in the lab and Barton was doing... _something_ in the bio-chamber that had better not involve interfering with Steve's moss experiments or _so help him_.

The other three of them were out on the Mars surface, working on the chores that necessitated the long process of pulling on space suits and making their way outside. It wasn't _dangerous_ , precisely - at least, not more dangerous than was usual for space travel - it was just tedious as hell. Stark was out here because he didn't trust anyone else to interact with his precious rovers, and Steve was taking soil samples for his own botanical experiments. Barnes, because he was an _unprofessional jackass_ who was completely incapable of taking anything seriously, was there because he had lost a bet with Barton over who could do the most somersaults and had to take over his solar panel maintenance duties for a week. 

Ideally, Steve would not have chosen Barnes for his crew. Ideally, Steve would never have spent more than an hour with Barnes in his entire _life_ because the man was _infuriating_ , no matter how well he filled out his space suit.

"Guys, we've got incoming," said Romanoff, breaking in over the comms. "That storm we were expecting? It's coming down on us sooner than we thought. Like, now. And it's bad."

"Copy that," said Steve, straightening. "Back to the Hab, everyone."

"We're not talking back to the Hab, Cap," she replied grimly. "We've gotta get to the ascent vehicle before this thing knocks it over for good. We've got five minutes, max."

" _Fuck_ ," Steve hissed with feeling. "Barton, Banner, Romanoff, suit up and head to the MAV. Barnes, Stark, we're checking the fuel lines before takeoff. We don't want anything going wrong during an emergency evac."

The crew set to their tasks, bickering forgotten with the urgency of their exit from the surface before the storm truly hit. With forced determination, the three suited astronauts traced the fuel lines on the exterior of the ascent vehicle, looking for leaks and checking the connections.

"Fuel line zero is operational," said Tony.

"One through five are operational as well," confirmed Steve.

"There's a problem with six," said Barnes, his voice sounding strained. "Uh, I think it's a big problem, Cap."

Barton, Romanoff and Banner piled out of the Hab, speeding towards them in their bulky suits. "What's the problem?" asked Banner breathlessly, peering over Barnes' shoulder to look at the system of pipes.

"The four of you, get inside the vehicle and start preparing for takeoff," said Steve, assessing the damage. "Barnes and I can fix the fuel line, and I want you to be ready to leave as soon as we get inside."

"Aye aye, Cap," said Tony, climbing in through the spacecraft's doors and sketching out a salute that looked more casual than his strained voice belied.

"Barnes, I need you to lift this tank and hold it while I screw the connections back together, OK?"

"OK," said Barnes, all business, as he squatted to heave up the heavy tank. Steve made short work of the plumbing, securing the tank back in place in very little time.

"Report on fuel line six," barked Steve into his microphone.

"All fuel lines are operational, Cap," said Romanoff. "Now get your asses back in here, we are ready for lift-off."

Clapping Barnes on the shoulder and breathing a sigh of relief, Steve turned to begin their ascent up the ladder into the spacecraft.

The solar panel that slammed into their bodies took them completely by surprise.

"Rogers? Barnes?" said Romanoff's frantic voice over the comms. "Do you read me?"

"They've been hit by debris, they've been thrown a hundred yards north," said Tony, inspecting his wrist computer as he unbuckled his harness. "I can reach them but I'm gonna need a tether."

"Rogers' suit is registering a breach, the pressure is dropping," read Barton from the screen in front of him. "Neither of their bio-monitors is registering any life signs. I don't - I don't think you're gonna find them alive out there."

"That can't be right," frowned Tony, looking over Barton's shoulder. 

"This thing is gonna tip over if we don't get off the ground in the next thirty seconds," said Banner, typing rapidly at his control panel. "What do we do, Tony?"

"What? Who left me in charge?"

"NASA did," snapped Romanoff. "Guys, we don't have time for retrieval mission. Are we sure they're dead?"

"Yes," said Barton grimly. "There's no way they could have survived the impact, and I'm getting negative readings from all of their life sensors."

"Right," Stark forced out, buckling himself back in. "Banner, let's get this thing in the air. I don't want to risk the rest of you as well."

"OK," said Banner. "Everyone hold on. Thrusters ready, prepare for takeoff."

The rest of their journey back up into orbit to intercept the _Shield_ space vessel was spent in sombre silence, apart from communications necessary for piloting the MAV. Even loquacious Stark was plunged into grim, quiet reflection.

They trudged aboard the ship after docking, and after programming in their course, sat around the table in their shared kitchen, staring at the floor.

Romanoff, ever the Russian, pulled a bottle of vodka from the cabinet and poured a cup for each of them.

"To Steve and Bucky," she said somberly, raising her drink. 

"Steve and Bucky," the rest of the group mumbled, toasting their fallen crewmates, then downing their vodka.

The room lapsed into silence. 

Stark put his cup back down on the table and then thunked his head down after it. 

" _Fuck_."

* * *

Nick Fury stood at the podium and waited for the assembled press to settle into silence.

"I am sorry to report that the _Avenger III_ mission to Mars has had to be unexpectedly cut short," he began. "Unfortunately, a storm on the planet's surface proved to be severe enough that the crew had to evacuate, and during the procedure both Captain Steven Grant Rogers and Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes were struck by debris and killed."

The room erupted into murmurs again and he gave them a moment to digest the information before continuing.

"The rest of the crew have successfully made it to the _Shield_ spacecraft, and are on their way home. Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes..." He stopped and sighed heavily. "Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes gave their lives in the pursuit of mankind's quest for knowledge, and their sacrifice will never be forgotten."

* * *

On the barren Martian landscape, the winds were blowing red dust over two bodies laying prone, surrounded by crumpled debris.

Impaled on an antenna, with Barnes' dead weight crushing his chest, Steve blinked into consciousness and sucked in a labored breath. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything I know about space I learned from Ridley Scott films so, keep that in mind.


	2. Sol 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beeping of his oxygen monitor was quite annoying, actually, decided Bucky as he groggily returned to consciousness. Why was it so intent on ruining his nap?
> 
> He opened one eye, and the searing pain that shot through his head reminded him abruptly that he was not, in fact, having a nap, and had, in fact, been left for dead on a godforsaken rock millions of miles from earth.
> 
> Rogers' strained voice reached him through his haze of head injury-induced disorientation. "Barnes?" he said tentatively, his voice hitching halfway through. "Barnes, are you conscious?"
> 
> Fantastic, not only was his head about to split open, he also had to deal with Captain Asshole. 

The beeping of his oxygen monitor was quite annoying, actually, decided Bucky as he groggily returned to consciousness. Why was it so intent on ruining his nap?

He opened one eye, and the searing pain that shot through his head reminded him abruptly that he was not, in fact, having a nap, and had, in fact, been left for dead on a godforsaken rock millions of miles from earth.

Rogers' strained voice reached him through his haze of head injury-induced disorientation. "Barnes?" he said tentatively, his voice hitching halfway through. "Barnes, are you conscious?"

Fantastic, not only was his head about to split open, he also had to deal with Captain Asshole. 

"Affirmative," he gritted out, and ventured as far as to open both eyes. He was lying on the floor of the Hab, with his helmet sitting next to his prone body. The oxygen monitor was smashed to pieces, but still soldiering on with its best and loudest beeps. With his fist, he finished the job, and the machinery lapsed into blissful silence.

"If you're quite finished wrecking the equipment, I could do with a doctor," drawled Rogers, looking far too casual for someone with an enormous hole in his abdomen.

"Fucking hell, Rogers," said Bucky, scrambling ungracefully to his feet and crossing over to the med bay, pulling off his gloves as he went. "You been challenging people to sword fights again?"

"Language- ah!" gasped Rogers as Bucky probed around the wound with tender, assessing fingers.

"OK, tough guy, I'm gonna clean out this wound and then staple you back together. The bleeding isn't too bad and it doesn't look like you've damaged anything important. It is gonna hurt like hell, though. I'm gonna numb it as best I can but I don't want to give you any of the good painkillers until we know what the situation is, OK?"

Rogers nodded, gritting his teeth as Bucky injected anesthetic into his stupidly perfect, if a little stabbed, torso.

"Do we know if the intercept worked?" asked Bucky in a low voice as he began to wipe away the debris from the wound. "Did they make it out?"

"We don't have any comms," said Rogers, breathing shallowly through the pain and gripping the table until his knuckles whitened. "The long-range sensors aren't - ah! - aren't picking up the _Shield_ in atmosphere, so I'm guessing they're on their way home."

"Well, at least that's somethin'," said Bucky wryly, using forceps to pull out a shard of metal from Rogers' abdomen.

"The impact knocked out the life sensors on both our suits, far as I can tell. They probably thought we were dead."

"Hold this," said Bucky, pressing a square of gauze to Rogers' stomach. Rogers nodded and pressed his hand against the dressing, freeing Bucky to dig around in the supply closet for the surgical staples. 

"This is gonna hurt," said Bucky as he lined up the skin stapler. 

"You really need to work on your bedside- ah! Fuck!"

"Don't be such a drama queen. You were only slightly stabbed."

"You're such an asshole."

"Hey, it could be worse. Imagine if you'd been stranded on an alien planet with Stark."

Rogers let out a huff of laughter and then winced in pain. "Now the storm's died down we need to shore up the power supplies," he said soberly, "and make sure none of the debris is going to damage the Hab, then we need to work out what the food situation is and find some way to let Nasa know we're here. We should suit up and head outside."

"Are you kidding me?" Bucky dropped the stapler on the table and went to wash his hands. "If you faint out there I'm not carrying two hundred pounds of self-sacrificing asshole back in here by myself. I'll suit up and deal with the outside. You stay put, catalog our food supplies, and try not to pop any of your stitches."

"Barnes, I'm your commanding officer," frowned Rogers, making to stand up from his chair before sitting heavily back down again, winded. 

"And I'm your fucking doctor, and I'm telling you to sit your ass back down and start counting calories."

"Yes, ma," grumbled Rogers, nonetheless staying put and pulling up the inventory lists on his tablet.

"No sass from you!" called Bucky as he grabbed a spare helmet and strode into the airlock.

* * *

"Johnson, I want you to scan these co-ordinates," said Coulson in lieu of a greeting over the phone. Daisy put down her sandwich and wiped her fingers on a crumpled napkin, turning to the satellite images of Mars that were displayed on her console.

"Sure thing," she replied, tapping in the digits as he read them out. "I'll just zoom in on- oh."

"What can you see?"

She peered at the screen, screwing up her eyes. "This is the _Avenger III_ site, right? Some things have changed near the Hab site since the ship launched. The solar panels have been wiped clean and I think some of the debris has been moved."

"There was a hell of a storm out there, could it be the wind?"

"Uh, I don't think so," she said, scrolling through the day's shots. "The debris has been laid out to spell... words."

"Words? You're saying one or both of them is still alive?"

"I can't think of any other explanation."

"What are the words?"

"It says... 'surprise, assholes'."

There was a long pause and then a sigh at the other end of the line. "That was definitely Barnes," said Coulson. "I need to get Fury on the phone." 


	3. Sol 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The process of planting the potatoes was, frankly, disgusting. 
> 
> The Martian soil was not nutrient-rich enough to support plant life, but Rogers' bright idea included the packets of dehydrated human waste from the space toilet, a bucket of water, and Bucky's strong desire never to speak of or think of the experience ever again.

"The _Avenger IV_ mission is due to land on the planet in approximately four years' time, which is 1460 days," said Rogers, showing Bucky the calculations he'd sketched out on his tablet.

"1461," corrected Bucky, just to be an asshole. "Leap day."

"Can you please take this seriously for _five minutes_ , Barnes?" huffed Rogers, scowling. "We were due to be here for 55 days, but we brought rations for twice that in case of something going wrong, and obviously there's only two of us rather than six, so that leaves us with 330 days of food each."

"We could stretch that out to 500-ish with rationing," said Bucky thoughtfully, squinting at the calculations. "We were planning 3000 calories a day each, but we can get by on 2000. So that's nearly 2000 days of food total that we need to come up with somehow. What do we do?"

Bucky was graced with one of Rogers' rare smiles that he usually reserved for weird botany things. "I actually had an idea for that."

* * *

The process of planting the potatoes was, frankly, disgusting. 

The Martian soil was not nutrient-rich enough to support plant life, but Rogers' bright idea included the packets of dehydrated human waste from the space toilet, a bucket of water, and Bucky's strong desire never to speak of or think of the experience ever again.

After they'd finished the planting and traipsed back inside, and Bucky had disinfected every part of his body that he could reach, they sat back down with a hearty meal of protein cubes, and started making plans.

"If NASA is watching the satellites, they'll have realized that we're not dead just from the movement of the debris," said Bucky, doodling on a piece of paper.

"Yes, I saw how you'd moved the debris," said Rogers drily, arching an eyebrow. "Professional as always, Barnes."

"Hey, I wanted them to know it was definitely me and not an alien who'd taken over my body. I'd have let them know about you as well, but there wasn't enough stuff to spell out 'I have an enormous stick up my ass'."

"You know-"

" _Anyway_ , I was thinking, since our antenna is completely fubared, maybe we can get one from the old _Iron Man_ probe. It's not that far from here."

"That's not a bad plan. Is it within range of the rover?"

"I think if we take the solar battery from _Dum-U_ and put it into _Dum-E_ , I could make it out there in a few days if I stopped to recharge a few times."

Rogers sat in thought for a second, meditatively chewing, and Bucky tried very hard not to notice how handsome he looked when he wasn't busy being an uptight killjoy. 

"That sounds like our best shot for setting up two-way communication with NASA," said Rogers slowly. "Besides, if we want to meet the _Avenger IV_ when it lands we're gonna need a way to travel all the way to the Schiaparelli crater, so we'll need to figure out the long-range transport sooner or later. Good call, Barnes. We should get started on that first thing in the morning."

Unable to agree on a single movie or TV show stored on either of their own laptops, they had taken to ransacking the personal effects of the other crew members, calling out movie suggestions as they came up.

"Romanoff has the complete _Downton Abbey_ box set," said Bucky, scrolling through the list. "I'm not telling you this because I want to watch it, I just think it's funny."

Rogers' brow was furrowed in concentration as he sat cross-legged on the floor of the crew's quarters with a laptop perched on his knees. "Banner has a lot of sci fi on here. How do you feel about _Star Trek_?"

"Which series?"

"Um..." Rogers tapped at the keyboard a few times. " _Enterprise_."

"Ugh."

" _Battlestar Galactica?_ "

"Veto."

" _Firefly_?"

Bucky sat up and closed Romanoff's laptop with a snap, grinning. "Shiny."

"Where do you want to do this? In the kitchen?"

"I figure if we take the mattress off of Barton's bunk and prop it up on the back wall of Stark's, we can fashion some kind of rudimentary sofa, then we can prop the laptop up on the chair opposite."

Rogers smirked. "Reminds me of being in a college dorm."

"Just remember to put a sock on the doorknob if you bring home any overnight guests," chuckled Bucky, hefting down the mattress and rearranging the sleeping quarters into a makeshift cinema.

"If we meet any hot Martian dudes out here, I'll bear that in mind."

"Oh, so you're gonna hoard all that hot Martian dick for yourself? Rude."

Rogers looked lost in thought for a second, and Bucky worried briefly that he'd hit some kind of nerve. "With all the infinite variety that could possibly exist in alien life, it's likely that even if we met some kind of humanoid aliens they'd have some other kind of reproductive system," he said eventually - because deep down, Captain Steven Grant Rogers was the biggest nerd in the universe.

"No dicks at all? What was even the point of going into space?"

They were a few episodes in by the time Bucky's head began nodding, and he was just weighing up the pros and cons of falling asleep and drooling in front of his superior officer, when Rogers stood up and stretched, revealing an inch of toned abdomen.

"It's time for us to get some shut-eye," he yawned, "but would you mind taking a look at my stitches before we turn in? I just wanna check they're healing properly."

"Sure thing, Cap, just take off your- oh," said Bucky as Rogers unselfconsciously peeled off his compression tee and turned to face him, his sculpted body gleaming in the low lighting. Clearing his throat, Bucky grabbed a torch from the kit under his bed and crouched down, inspecting the wound from every angle and probing the area around it with gentle fingers.

"Any oozing or swelling?"

"Nope, nothing like that."

"How's the pain?"

"Not noticeable unless I do something to jostle it or try to do a sit-up or whatever," shrugged Rogers.

"OK, well as your doctor I'm advising you against doing sit-ups until you don't have an enormous hole in your abdomen, but apart from that it's healing up as well as can be expected. You'll have a scar afterwards but, like, a sexy one."

"Good to hear," smiled Rogers, clapping him on the shoulder. "Good work today, Barnes." He turned away to start getting ready for bed, pulling off his cargo pants and giving Bucky an eyeful of his taut butt cheeks, barely clad in a pair of tiny shorts.

"Hng," said Bucky quietly.

"What was that?" asked Rogers, peering innocently over his shoulder.

There was a long pause. 

"I'll be in my bunk," said Bucky.


	4. Sol 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What happened to your eyebrows?" asked Barnes, looking up from his tablet as Steve walked back into the living area.
> 
> Steve sat down heavily on a chair and shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it."
> 
> Barnes' knowing smirk was infuriating. "Did you forget that human beings exhale excess oxygen?"
> 
> " _I don't want to talk about it._ "

Steve was beginning to warm to Barnes, but his tendency to make a joke of every situation was still putting him on edge. Still, they had fallen into a comfortable routine of working, brainstorming, eating, and bickering about movies.

"The potatoes are gonna need more water than we've given them so far," said Steve thoughtfully after breakfast, chewing on his stylus. "We have spare jet fuel that we don't need, I'm gonna do a controlled burn until we have enough."

Barnes narrowed his eyes. "You're gonna blow us up, aren't you."

"You can double-check my calculations if you want to," huffed Steve.

"I'm kidding, I trust you," breezed Barnes, clapping him on the shoulder and standing up. "I'm gonna go finish up with fitting the second battery into _Dum-E_ , then see if the engine still fires up. Maybe do some cool stunts."

"Don't mess around out there, Barnes. Without that rover we're toast."

"I can't believe you'd bring up toast at a time like this," groaned Barnes, tipping his head back, exposing the length of his delicious throat. "Do you know how long it's been since I've eaten toast?"

A vein started to throb in Steve's forehead. How could someone so attractive be so infuriating? "I'm _serious_."

"Would you relax? I haven't crashed a vehicle since I was seventeen."

"That's not reassuring _at all_ ," he called as Barnes strode out to the airlock. 

Trying to ignore the nagging anxiety at the back of his head at having a mission critical task entrusted to someone of uncertain reliability, Steve turned back to his calculations and triple-checked them before nodding to himself and heading into the potato enclosure.

* * *

"What happened to your eyebrows?" asked Barnes, looking up from his tablet as Steve walked back into the living area.

Steve sat down heavily on a chair and shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it."

Barnes' knowing smirk was infuriating. "Did you forget that human beings exhale excess oxygen?"

" _I don't want to talk about it._ "

* * *

**Sol 24**

"The only remaining problem is the life support in the rover," said Barnes, propping up one leg onto his chair and leaning close to show Steve his scribbled calculations. "The heater's using up so much of the battery that I'm gonna need to switch it off almost all the time to have enough juice. I'm going to see how long I can go without it before the cold reduces my functioning levels too far, then we can figure out how much it's safe to ration it."

"You'll switch it on the second you start experiencing problems, you understand?" frowned Steve. "It's too early in this mission for you to put yourself in unnecessary danger."

"If I die, tell my mom I had a healthy breakfast. That's all she's gonna want to know."

"I'm not a great liar, Barnes, so you're gonna have to eat one of these protein bars if you want your mom to believe that."

"If you're trying to trick me into proper nutrition..." began Barnes, narrowing his eyes suspiciously, then he let out a huff of laughter. "Then you and my mom would actually get on really well."

"Having met you, I'm assuming the poor woman is a saint."

"She is," laughed Barnes, "but don't tell her I said that."

* * *

A few hours later, Steve was poring over the designs for the _Iron Man_ probe when he heard the tell-tale whooshing sound of the airlock opening.

"OK," said Barnes weakly through chattering teeth as he shuffled inside, shivering violently. "The heater is actually pretty important."

"Christ," said Steve, leaping to his feet and rubbing Barnes' arms. Barnes clutched at Steve's back, his icy fingers digging into his skin, and pressed every inch of his lean, muscular, freezing body against him.

"I always thought you were like a space heater," said Barnes nonsensically, burrowing his cold nose into Steve's neck. His hands crept under the hem of Steve's shirt and he yelped as his frigid palms slid over his lower back.

"Go get into your bunk," ordered Steve, "and grab every blanket you can find. I'm getting you a hot drink."

"Sure," said Barnes, reluctantly peeling himself off of Steve. "Hoard all that body heat for yourself, I see how it is."

"Barnes."

"I'm going, I'm going."

By the time Steve headed into the crew's quarters, a huge thermos of tea and a couple of spare heaters in tow, Barnes was wrapped in six blankets and was clinging onto what looked like...

"Is that Teddy Bearington?" squeaked Steve before he could stop himself.

"He was all alone in your bunk, Rogers, I couldn't leave him there without a blanket."

"Sit up and drink your tea," sighed Steve, shaking his head. He arranged the heaters around the bed to blast hot air towards Barnes, who had worked through the tea, was beginning to lose the blue tinge to his skin and had stopped visibly shivering, but was still huddled up into a tiny ball under the covers. He placed a hand on Barnes' forehead and almost flinched when it was freezing cold to the touch.

"Budge over," said Steve, joining Barnes under the covers. "We need to make sure your core temperature stabilizes." The beginnings of a teasing smirk began to spread out over Barnes' face, but Steve cut him off before he could make a smart comment. "I'm the big spoon. This is non-negotiable." 

Situating himself behind Barnes' broad shoulders, he pulled the man's body flush against his, shivering a little himself on being blanketed by Barnes' icy coldness. "Gimme your hands," he ordered gruffly, taking the frozen digits between his big, warm palms and rubbing them gently. "You're no use to me with frostbite."

"Good thinking," giggled Barnes, wriggling impossibly closer to Steve's body and insinuating his frigid feet between Steve's calves. "You might want to warm up my dick as well, just in case we end up having to populate the planet."

Steve sighed, repressing a chuckle. "When we get back to earth I'm calling up Johns Hopkins to see if they will revoke your medical degree."

"Hey, plant boy, you don't know how this works. You probably think I have a stamen down here."

"If you get pollen on my blanket I'm throwing you out the airlock."

"I would never do that in front of Teddy Bearington," gasped Barnes. 

"So operation travel-without-a-heater is a no-go. Can you carry enough food supplies to make it to the probe site without turning it off?"

"Maybe, but I actually had an idea while I was freezing my ass off out there."

"Your ass is fine, Barnes," smirked Steve. "It's right here."

"Thanks for noticing, Cap, but I was being metaphorical."

"What was the idea?"

"What do we have that's buried out back that's _super_ warm all the time?"

Eyes widening, Steve shook his head. "No. Nuh-uh. We are not digging up the Arc reactor."

"We kinda have to dig up the Arc reactor."

"Your plan is for us to die of radiation sickness rather than hypothermia?"

"It's fine as long as we don't disturb the shielding, and if we don't find some way to get in touch with NASA then we're dead anyway, so."

Holding Barnes closer to his chest, Steve sighed again. "I'll think about it."

* * *

**Sol 25**

"I hope this doesn't make me infertile," said Barnes' voice over the comms. "I'd hate to have to explain that to my future husband."

He was perched on the driver's seat inside _Dum-E_ with the incredibly radioactive Arc reactor on the passenger side, and Steve was watching anxiously from inside the Hab.

"Just come back safe," instructed Steve. "We can worry about future generations receiving your sub-par genetic material once you're back here."

"Sure thing, Cap," said Barnes, gunning the engine. "See you in a while."

* * *

"From the satellite footage we have obtained of the Mars landing site, we have been able to establish that Captain Steven Grant Rogers and Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes did in fact survive after the evacuation," announced Fury to the press room. "I realize this may come as a shock. From what we can tell, the storm knocked out their life monitors, and the crew of the _Avenger III_ mission had every reason to think that they were dead."

"We are hoping to send a supply mission up to Mars as soon as we can to tide them over for now, and we're moving up the timetable for the _Avenger IV_ mission."

There was a clamor as the reporters started to ask questions.

"How have the rest of the crew reacted to the news?"

"We have not yet informed the crew that they are alive. They have a long time until they get back to Earth and they don't need any distractions."

"Can you show us pictures of the moved debris?"

"Not before the watershed, no."

* * *

"You're sure that's their rover?" asked Coulson, peering over Daisy's shoulder. 

"Yeah, that's definitely it," she replied, tapping the screen with her pen. Coulson took the pen off of her, frowning and buffing away at an imaginary scratch on the screen. "It's been moving steadily for two-hour stretches and then pausing to recharge the batteries."

"And they're definitely not headed towards the _Avenger IV_ site?"

"No, sir. It's completely the wrong direction."

"Where the hell are they headed to? There's nothing out there except..."

"Except?"

Coulson looked completely stricken. "I need to make a phone call."

* * *

**Sol 39**

Two weeks of driving and Bucky was pretty sick of every piece of music that humankind had ever composed at this point. At least, he was sick of the music that the rest of the crew had brought with them and that he had loaded into the rover for his journey. Why the hell was Rogers so obsessed with 20th century Big Band music? If he never heard a trumpet again, it would be too soon.

As the sun rose over the barren Martian landscape he caught sight of a glint of metal buried under the red sand, and he grinned. 


	5. Sol 58

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve had started talking to his plants. 
> 
> As a professional botanist, he was well aware that the idea that plants respond to sounds is completely ridiculous, unless you're talking about ultrasonic seed germination, but in a fit of sentimentality he had insisted that Barnes take Teddy Bearington with him in the rover, so it was either talk to his plants or start drawing faces on his scientific equipment, and he wasn't quite that starved of human interaction just yet.
> 
> The potatoes were just about ready to harvest, but that ridiculous sentimental part of him was waiting for Barnes to get back with the rover before pulling them up, so they could eat them together.
> 
> "You'd better be delicious, do you hear me?" he muttered, tenderly inspecting the leaves of one plant. "I sacrificed my eyebrows for this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Speaking of Teddy Bearington, I made a printable Bucky Bear that you can colour in and put in your window for local kids to spot when they go out on their walks. [Click here to download it as a PDF](https://easyupload.io/94jy9x).

Steve had started talking to his plants. 

As a professional botanist, he was well aware that the idea that plants respond to sounds is completely ridiculous, unless you're talking about ultrasonic seed germination, but in a fit of sentimentality he had insisted that Barnes take Teddy Bearington with him in the rover, so it was either talk to his plants or start drawing faces on his scientific equipment, and he wasn't quite that starved of human interaction just yet.

The potatoes were just about ready to harvest, but that ridiculous sentimental part of him was waiting for Barnes to get back with the rover before pulling them up, so they could eat them together.

"You'd better be delicious, do you hear me?" he muttered, tenderly inspecting the leaves of one plant. "I sacrificed my eyebrows for this."

Abruptly, the radio set in his pocket crackled to life. He scrambled for it and pressed the speaker button. "Barnes? Barnes, is that you?"

There was some more static and then a choppy, distorted voice came through. "Copy th .. on approach ... minutes ..."

"Barnes, the signal's not great. What's your location?"

"Just on my way in, Cap," he said more clearly. "See you in a few."

"Glad to hear your voice, Barnes."

* * *

"May," said Coulson, striding over the entry hall to the Jet Propulsion Lab to pull her into a warm handshake. "It's always a pleasure."

"It's good to see you, Phil," she said, showing him through to the workshop. "I still don't understand what's got you so agitated."

"Did you get the thing?"

"Yeah, it's right here," she replied, pulling a dust sheet off of a replica version of the _Iron Man_ lander. "Why are you so interested in such old tech all of a sudden?"

"It's not me that's interested," he said intensely, inspecting the machinery closely. "It's Rogers and Barnes."

* * *

"You bring me the nicest things," drawled Steve through the comms, helping Barnes to unload the lander from the rover.

It was difficult to tell through the helmets of their suits, but Barnes looked pretty good for someone who'd just spent nearly a month inside a tiny car, and Steve was trying real hard not to grin like an idiot with joy at seeing another human being again.

"I would've brought you flowers," said Barnes with his charming smile, hefting a piece of metal over his shoulder, "but the gas station was all out."

"Gas station flowers?" tutted Steve as they lowered the _Iron Man_ probe onto the ground. "I have standards, you know."

"Classy guy like you? I wouldn't expect you to put out for anything less than cut-price bodega chocolates."

"Have you had a look at the solar panel contacts inside the paneling?" asked Steve, crouching down to inspect the hinges on the lander's petals.

Barnes shook his head, which is not an easy task in a bulky space helmet. "Didn't want to open it up before the journey in case I got dust in it. Please, do the honors."

Extracting a screwdriver from a pocket, Steve gently prised open the plating to reveal the connections inside. "It's what we thought, the problem is with the power supply. We should be able to connect our own solar panels without too much difficulty."

"Great. Let's head in and plan out our next steps," said Barnes over his shoulder, already striding towards the airlock. "Please tell me that the potatoes have grown," he groaned once they were inside, after divesting himself of suit and helmet. "I've been dreaming of potatoes for a week."

"They're ready to harvest today, but I have even better news. Follow me." Steve lead them into the bio lab and reverently opened up one of the growing chambers to show a row of delicate plants, slim stems bowing under the weight of ripe, red strawberries.

Barnes let out a low whistle. "I swear, I will never insult the noble art of botany ever again."

Steve gave him a look.

"Never ever again until at least the end of today," amended Barnes.

* * *

**Sol 60**

"It wouldn't be difficult for them to establish communication now they've retrieved the lander if they fix the power supply," said May, pulling up the schematics for the _Iron Man_ probe on her screen. "There's a serial port that we used to use for diagnostics just here, which they could connect up to the rover's comms system. Failing that, we can control the camera angle remotely, which would at least allow us to get a look at the situation."

"Have we seen any sign that they've been successful in connecting?" asked Coulson, leaning over her shoulder.

"The solar panels have been moved, so they've got the right idea about the power supply, but we're scanning to see if the aerial has connected yet and we haven't received anything that indicates- oh," she said, stopping abruptly as an alert flashed up in her terminal window. "The antenna has started to orient itself towards the Earth, they must have got it turned on."

"Are they broadcasting anything?"

"Let me check. If they've managed to hook up the lander to the _Dum-E_ rover then they should be able to send us a message."

The terminal window took a moment to refresh, then a message blinked into life on the screen.

 **Dum-E:** Hey Nasa, we're not dead.

Coulson threw his head back and suppressed a grin. "Oh, thank God. I need to call Fury."

* * *

"Rogers, you're hogging the console. I wanna talk to Nasa."

Steve sighed and turned around in his chair to look at Barnes, who had strawberry juice smeared on his chin and looked ridiculous, and infuriatingly lickable. "We already agreed on what we were going to say, Barnes, and I don't trust you not to go off-script."

"You type like an old lady, it's almost physically painful to watch."

"I have a typing speed of eighty words per minute and I _know_ that you only want to take control so you can ask who won the most recent series of _The Bachelor_."

"It's important information! It could save our lives!"

"Once we've hashed out all the details of the next supply mission I promise I will hand over control of the console and let you ask Coulson whatever questions you can think of."

"Did you at least find out how the crew are doing?" asked Barnes, dropping gracefully into the seat next to Steve and peering at the screen.

"All they've said so far is that they are all healthy and on route to Earth. The last question I asked was about how they dealt with the news of us being alive. Coulson's reply is due any second now."

The response scrolled onto the screen one character at a time and the two astronauts stared in disbelief.

Steve thumped a fist down onto the desk. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

* * *

"Sir, it's time we told the crew that Rogers and Barnes survived," said Coulson urgently to Fury as he strode along the corridor.

"The crew have a long mission, Phil, and they don't need this kind of distraction. We've already talked about this."

"The situation is different now, we've established contact. They're going to find out sooner or later, and honestly, I think Rogers and Barnes will mutiny if we don't."

"How the hell do they plan to mutiny when they're stuck on an alien planet and completely dependent on us for survival?"

"I don't know, sir, but knowing them, they will find a way."


	6. Sol 128

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tony," sighed Banner for the eighth time that afternoon, "I can't work with you throwing that ball around in the lab. Go out into the hallway if you want to play around."
> 
> "It's my creative process!" protested Stark, pouting. "Besides, there isn't gravity out in the hallway, it takes all the fun out of it."
> 
> "I know you're grieving," replied Banner calmly, cutting off Stark's protest with a gesture. "We all are, but you can't deal with all of your problems by being an asshole."
> 
> "Agree to disagree."

"Tony," sighed Banner for the eighth time that afternoon, "I can't work with you throwing that ball around in the lab. Go out into the hallway if you want to play around."

"It's my creative process!" protested Stark, pouting. "Besides, there isn't gravity out in the hallway, it takes all the fun out of it."

"I know you're grieving," replied Banner calmly, cutting off Stark's protest with a gesture. "We all are, but you can't deal with all of your problems by being an asshole."

"Agree to disagree."

Romanoff's voice broke in over the comms. "Fellas, we've got a video message from Coulson, addressed to all of us."

"Be right there," said Stark, already bounding up the ladder. Banner followed him at a more sedate pace, pulling himself along in the weightless environment inside the corridor before sliding back down into the artificial gravity down in the center of the ship.

Barton and Romanoff were already in front of the screen, fighting over a packet of beef jerky.

"There's more jerky in the cupboard, you know," said Banner mildly, taking a seat behind them.

"I want _this_ jerky," they said in unison.

"Great, I'm on a space ship with a bunch of children," grumbled Stark. "Bruce, did you confiscate my ball?"

"Can we just watch the video?" said Romanoff, putting her feet up on the console and stuffing a piece of jerky into her mouth, jabbing at the "play" button.

Coulson's face appeared on the screen, looking ashen and serious. "There's no easy way to say this," he intoned grimly. "So I'm just going to say it. Rogers and Barnes survived the evacuation. They are both alive and well, and we have now managed to establish contact and are arranging a supply mission to keep them going until the _Avenger IV_ mission can get to them.

"It looks like a piece of debris from the storm knocked out their life monitors. You couldn't have known. Rogers has been really clear in his messages that they don't blame you. Barnes has shared similar sentiments but used more colorful language in his communications that I will not repeat here. 

"I realize you will have a lot of questions. We're sending you a full report and will answer any questions you send us. I'm sorry we didn't tell you sooner." He blew out a breath, looking like a weight had been lifted form his shoulders. "OK. Coulson out."

The four astronauts sat in silence for a moment, jerky laying forgotten on a chair, until Barton gave a whoop.

"They're alive!" he laughed, grabbing Romanoff for a hug and jumping up and down. Romanoff joined in, smiling to herself. Even placid Banner clapped them both on the arm, grinning from ear to ear.

"Christ, they're stuck alone on a planet together," grimaced Romanoff, pausing. "They're gonna kill each other."

Stark, uncharacteristically silent, sat staring at a point in the middle distance. Eventually, he unclenched his jaw long enough to speak.

"I left them behind," he said gravely, then stormed out of the room. A muffled thump was audible from the crew's quarters, followed by a loud and strongly-felt "fuck!"

Banner edged out of the room towards the sound. "I'll just... go give him his ball back."

* * *

Bucky was scowling at the box of pipette tips.

"Rogers, I think you might be a psychopath."

Rogers looked up from fondling a bucket of moss, or whatever it was he was doing, his brow furrowed adorably.

"What're you basing that on?"

"I did a psych rotation as part of my medical degree, I know the signs. Who takes tips from the box at random? Didn't your mother raise you right?"

"First of all, get your own damn pipette tips," grumbled Rogers, peeling off his gloves and snatching the box out of his hands. "Second of all, there's no benefit to taking them out in perfectly straight lines like an automaton. You still have the same number of tips at the end of it."

"You seem like such a buttoned-up stick-in-the-mud, but deep down, I knew there was something horribly depraved about you. I'm taking photographs. I'm going to show the world."

"You're the one who has an insatiable appetite for my blood," pouted Rogers, pointing at the tiny band-aid on his bicep. "I'm stuck on a strange planet with a vampire, and you're making a fuss about my pipetting."

"You're the only test subject I have left, you're lucky I haven't dissected you."

Rogers heaved a world-weary sigh that by this point Bucky could tell was about thirty percent genuine. "C'mon, it's time to go deal with the solar panels and check the connections on the lander."

"Sure," said Bucky, stripping off his gloves and tossing them into the biohazard bin, making sure his slides were neatly lined up in their little plastic case. Striding to the airlock, he grabbed Rogers' helmet and threw it to him, effortlessly catching his suit as it was thrown to him in return. They moved around each other in well-practiced unison, making checks on their kit and tossing equipment back and forth as required, until they were both fully suited up and ready to close the airlock.

"We make a pretty good double act," smirked Rogers, flipping the switch to begin depressurization.

"We should ask Barton to get us an in with the traveling circus- hey, what's that hissing noise?"

"I can't hear a-"

The impact of the atmosphere forcing its way in through the rip in the airlock's canvas sent them flying backwards, the whole structure bouncing across the Martian landscape, the astronauts tumbling head-over heels in the confined space. With a boom, the capsule hit the side of a hill, forcing them to a stop. Rogers' faceplate hit the wall with a sickening crack. Panting, Bucky was back on his feet as quickly as he could, assessing the damage around them. The air was still leaking out with a steady hiss, but Bucky couldn't tell where the hole in the canvas was.

He turned his attention to Rogers' prone body, slumped onto the floor. With a grunt of effort, he turned him over to inspect the damage and pulled in a breath when he saw the state of his face plate, which was smashed to pieces. 

"Rogers?" he said urgently, shaking him by the arms. "You hearing me? Steve?"

Rogers gasped in a breath and groggily opened his eyes, looking up at him blearily. Bucky rubbed his thumb gently over the blood dribbling from a small wound on Rogers' forehead, then checked the oxygen monitor on the arm of his suit.

"OK, Steve," said Bucky urgently. "You've got enough oxygen for right now, but we need to seal the hole in your suit and the hole in the canvas before we do anything else."

"Is the Hab ripped?" said Rogers weakly, looking mildly cross-eyed. "My potatoes..."

"Let's concentrate on saving your punk ass before we worry about the plants, OK?" said Bucky, standing up to frantically run his hands over the canvas wall, searching for the leak. "It's all gonna be moot if I can't find the fucking hole, anyway."

"You got anything we can burn?"

"No, why would we- oh, smoke! Right." Bucky grinned and pulled a pair of scissors out of his pocket. "Good thing you've been growing your hair out, huh?" he said, kneeling down to snip off a lock of Rogers' hair. Ignoring his protesting grumbles, he yanked at the power supply on the wall until he dislodged a couple of wires, which he pressed together to make a spark, setting the tuft of hair between his fingers alight.

They watched, holding their breath, as the insubstantial wisp of smoke drifted up, up, up... and out of a microscopic tear in the fabric.

"Got you, you son of a bitch," said Bucky with some satisfaction, ripping off a length of duct tape and patching the hole. He breathed a sigh of relief as the hissing noise stopped entirely. "Right, we've gotta sort out your face panel before we can get back to the- what are you doing?" he finished as he saw Rogers hacking off his own sleeve. "Have you gone space-crazy?"

"Fabric," said Rogers slowly, as though Bucky were an idiot. "We can stick it over the smashed helmet with the duct tape and I can just keep my arm inside the suit."

"Sure, the only thing that can make this situation better is you being one-armed and unable to see."

"At least you don't gotta look at my face any more," said Rogers, studiously taping up the hole where his sleeve used to be.

"Silver lining," muttered Bucky, helping to smooth the tape. "OK, we need to get you to the rover without you freezing, which means we need to get this capsule back over towards the Hab, which means..."

"Hamster wheel," agreed Rogers, finishing the patch over the hole in his helmet and laying his shoulder against the wall. "On three?"

"One, two, heave!" yelled Bucky, and they threw their combined weight against the side of the airlock. Gradually, with much cursing and falling over, they managed to thump and roll the capsule until it was within a few meters of the rover.

"I'll get to _Dum-E_ and leave the door unlocked," said Rogers, double checking the seal on his suit. "You get to the Hab, assess the damage, and bring another suit and a couple of meals out to the rover. We can sleep in there tonight and see what we can do about the situation tomorrow."

Bucky nodded grimly and opened the door, sending Rogers scurrying to the warmth of the rover as he strode over to their ruined habitation unit. Frost lay thick over the potato plants, which were slumped dead on the ground, having frozen instantly once the Hab was breached. As quickly as he could, he stalked into the crew quarters and grabbed a spare suit, a couple of meal packets, and, after a moment's thought, Teddy Bearington.

Piling back into the rover next to Rogers, he made short work of closing the doors and repressurizing the cabin, until they could both pull off their helmets.

"Strip," said Bucky, holding up the new suit. Rogers struggled one-handed with his suit's fastenings for a moment before stopping and giving Bucky a piteous look.

Bucky rolled his eyes and opened the suit for him, averting his eyes as he climbed out of it and stretched luxuriantly, his thermal underwear leaving very little to the imagination. He didn't look back until Rogers had pulled on the fresh suit up to his waist and was leaning back against his seat, head tipped back and eyes screwed shut as he contemplated their situation.

"My fucking potatoes," he said sadly, voice just on the edge of breaking.

"Here," said Bucky softly, handing over the bear. Steve's grave face broke into a smile and he stroked a hand over Teddy Bearington's soft head.

"Thanks, Bucky," he murmured, meeting his eyes gratefully.

"We'll figure it out," he replied, reclining his seat and making himself comfortable for the night, gesturing for Steve to do the same. "We've survived this long."

Steve hummed thoughtfully, pushing his seat back and rolling onto his side, his hand unthinkingly finding Bucky's waist. "We are too pretty to die," he said eventually, through a yawn. 

"That's the spirit," said Bucky sleepily, pulling Steve's arm more snugly around his waist. Then, exhausted, they drifted off to sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Team Taking Pipette Tips Out In Rows


	7. Sol 131

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky looked up at him through his eyelashes from where he was kneeling next to a makeshift grave site for the remains of the potato plants. He'd even managed to fashion a headstone from a spare whiteboard, on which was written "Here lie Steve's precious potato plants, taken before their time. 2035-2035. Rest In Potatoes."
> 
> "I found an e-book about grief counseling on the main server and it said that ceremonies like this are essential for the healthy processing of loss." He blinked up at Steve, biting his pouty lower lip. "Don't you wanna process your loss healthily?"
> 
> This time, when Steve sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, Bucky knew that he had won.

May rapped at the door to the office and opened it without waiting for an invitation. A slight, mousy-haired woman was lying fast asleep on the couch, her arms flung away from her, fingers scant centimeters from touching the hand of the room's other inhabitant, a slim, tousle-headed man in a rumpled shirt, similarly sprawled over an adjacent loveseat.

"Fitzsimmons," said May sharply, making them both jolt awake.

"What?" said Fitz, his voice rough with sleep as he scrubbed at his face with one hand.

"Dr. May," said Simmons politely, tucking her hair behind her ear and straightening her blouse. "What a lovely surprise." She shot a meaningful look at Fitz.

"Yes," he agreed, waking up bit-by-bit and remembering his manners. "Why are you- I mean, how can we help you?"

May crossed her arms. "The probe launch timetable has been moved up, so we need to shore up your trajectories."

"The trajectories really don't show much variation at all," said Simmons, just as Fitz said, "Actually, they're all the same, really."

"They're all four hundred and twenty sols or thereabouts? Why is it so much?"

"Mars is in a terrible position," said Fitz, just as Simmons said "Earth is in a terrible position."

"The planetary distances aren't ideal," explained Simmons.

"That's an understatement," scoffed Fitz. "It would almost be better to-" He turned to Simmons and tailed off.

"No, surely we couldn't-" she replied. 

"But if we-"

"That might work." 

May frowned, looking from one scientist to the other, not happy to be left out of their strange telepathic conversation.

"We... have an idea," explained Fitz, turning to May. "So we need to go away and do some mathematics right now. Urgently."

"We won't be long," said Simmons, grimacing politely and collecting a couple of mugs from the coffee table as they hurried out through the other door, chattering back and forth as they went.

"Cup of tea before we start?" May heard Simmons say as she stared incredulously at their retreating backs.

"Do we have any Irn Bru?" asked Fitz, before they disappeared out of earshot.

May shook her head and privately resolved to stop letting Coulson have input into her hiring decisions.

* * *

"This is ridiculous."

"Come on, Steve," wheedled Bucky. "I'm giving you the closure you need to move on."

"I'm not doing it."

Bucky looked up at him through his eyelashes from where he was kneeling next to a makeshift grave site for the remains of the potato plants. He'd even managed to fashion a headstone from a spare whiteboard, on which was written "Here lie Steve's precious potato plants, taken before their time. 2035-2035. Rest In Potatoes."

"I found an e-book about grief counseling on the main server and it said that ceremonies like this are essential for the healthy processing of loss." He blinked up at Steve, biting his pouty lower lip. "Don't you wanna process your loss healthily?"

This time, when Steve sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, Bucky knew that he had won.

"Dearly beloved," said Steve from between clenched teeth. "We are gathered here today to honor and pay tribute to the life of my potato plants. Plants, you provided us with extra food that may have saved our lives, and you were taken from us too soon by shoddy cut-price Nasa material failures." He shot a glance to the canvas wall of the hab, patched up with about three rolls of duct tape. "We mourn your passing, and we will honor your sacrifice by eating your children."

"Amen," intoned Bucky somberly, laying down another whiteboard on which he had drawn a wreath. He grinned up at Steve, who couldn't help but smile in return. "See? Don't you feel better?"

"Come on," said Steve, ignoring the question entirely and giving Bucky his hand to pull him up from the ground. "Nasa's going to send us the updated timetable for the supply probe launch, and we need to start planning our rationing accordingly."

"I know you feel better," insisted Bucky, following him through to the main console. "I can tell from your aura."

"Stop looking at my aura. My eyes are up here, you know."

* * *

"So what are we looking at here?" said Fury, sweeping into the briefing room.

Coulson turned on the holo-screen with a flick of his wrist and pulled up a chart. "The original rations that they brought with them can take Rogers and Barnes to approximately Sol 518 with rationing. They won't be able to grow any more potato plants, but the potatoes they've already grown can stretch it out to Sol 640."

"What's the timetable for our supply probe?"

"The journey will take 421 days or thereabouts. Our present timetable has the probe arriving on Sol 868."

"At which point, they'll have either resorted to cannibalism or will both no longer be with us."

"Which means that we need to more than halve the production time for the probe."

"Can you?"

"I'm going to talk to May about it. If you find my body floating face down in the river, you'll know why."

"I wouldn't worry about it," Fury reassured him. "May knows how to hide a body better than that." 

* * *

**Sol 140**

**Connecting to the S.H.I.E.L.D. spacecraft...**

**Connection established.**

**Dum-E:** Hey guys I think you forgot something.

**SHIELD:** Barnes, this is Romanoff. Everyone's here. Why did Rogers leave you in control of the console?

**Dum-E:** He lost the coin toss. You're stuck talking to me, losers. He says hi, though. No hard feelings about leaving us to die on Mars.

**SHIELD:** Glad to see your sense of humor survived the trauma. We're all relieved to hear from you. You boys haven't murdered each other yet?

**Dum-E:** There have been some close calls but Rogers seems to be immune to most of the poisons I have available. How's life on board ship?

**SHIELD:** Stark invented a robot that takes your coffee order, makes the drink, and then psychoanalyzes you based on it. Barton's stopped taking milk in his coffee because it accused him of having an Oedipus complex.

**SHIELD:** Basically we don't miss you at all.

**Dum-E:** The feeling's mutual. Rogers says 'tell Nat we found her stash of Downton Abbey episodes.'

**SHIELD:** Those aren't mine and you can't prove anything.

* * *

**Sol 163**

The delicate strawberry plants, protected from the harsh Martian conditions in their little pods in the lab, were still producing fruit intermittently. Every few days, Steve would, with an air of hushed reverence, bring a few of the sweet red berries into the common area and then uncomfortably try to look anywhere else than Bucky's face as he set to eating his share of the fresh fruit, moaning and licking his lips in a display that seemed almost calculated to shatter Steve's fragile self-control.

"You know what would go great with these?" said Bucky dreamily, face smeared with strawberry juice. "Dark chocolate."

"Nuh-uh," disagreed Steve, shaking his head. "With strawberries? Whipped cream or nothing."

Bucky tilted his head, considering, and Steve gripped the arm rests of his chair tightly to stop himself from reaching out to wipe the juice from Bucky's cheek with his thumb, then cupping his beautiful face, leaning in and-

"That's also good," conceded Bucky. "I don't suppose the supply probe's gonna have either of those nestled in among the protein cubes?"

"Maybe they could send us chocolate-flavored protein cubes."

The way Bucky scrunched up his face at this was adorable. "Don't even talk to me, Steve. Gross." He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head. "Actually, do talk to me," he amended, checking his watch. "It's time for my bedtime story."

"I can't believe you're insisting having _Twilight_ read to you," grumbled Steve, nonetheless picking up his tablet and bringing up the ebook.

"Fair's fair, Stevie," said Bucky over his shoulder, leading the way into the crew's quarters. "I read you _Foundation_. That means you have to suffer, too."

" _Foundation_ is a classic," Steve insisted, pulling up a chair next to the head of Bucky's bunk.

"You know," said Bucky, with his almost irresistible come-hither eyes. "You and Teddy Bearington are always welcome in my bed..." 

"I'm not saying I wouldn't like to, Bucky," sighed Steve reluctantly, kicking himself internally for the hundredth time, "but we've got a long mission here together and as your commanding officer it's my duty to make sure we don't complicate our relationship."

"Hey, I'm just suggesting we share our body heat to conserve energy. Get your mind out of the gutter, Steve." With that, he turned away and shucked off his sweatpants, making sure to give Steve an eyeful of his muscular, beautiful thighs and the taut peach of his ass. 

"My eyes are up here, Captain," he drawled, peeling off his shirt and working out a kink in his shoulder, making the muscles of his back roll and contract enticingly. Satisfied that he had made his point, he threw himself into his bunk and made himself comfortable, wriggling around until he was wrapped in his blanket like a burrito, then looked at Steve expectantly.

Steve cleared his throat and began to read. "My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down..."

* * *

"Now, when you say that we're _behind_ ," said Fury sternly, crossing his arms over his chest, "how behind are we talking?"

"Twenty days, give or take," said Coulson, tapping his pen anxiously against his desk. "Which, if you're keeping score, is definitely more time than we have."

"We can shave off a few days here and there by parallelizing a couple of processes," added May, standing to attention behind the desk, "but a lot of the timescales are fixed due to the manufacturing. There's not a lot else we can do without cutting into the safety check time."

"We can also ask Rogers and Barnes to cut down on their food rations, but they're already stretched pretty thin," said Coulson.

"How much time do the safety checks take?" asked Fury.

"Fifteen days, usually, but-"

"And how often do these safety checks find a problem?"

"Not... very often, but sir-"

"Try to save as much time as you can before the launch, but if it comes down to the wire, you have my permission to skip the safety checks."

"Yes, sir. Let's hope it doesn't come to that."


	8. Sol 220

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Did Nasa say anything yet?" asked Bucky for the fifth time, hanging upside down out of his bunk.
> 
> "Still no," called Steve from the kitchen. "I'll let you know if it changes. Why don't you read a book or something?"
> 
> "Read a book," muttered Bucky, shaking his head. "Steve, you know I can't read," he yelled. "They only brought me on this mission for my looks."

"Did Nasa say anything yet?" asked Bucky for the fifth time, hanging upside down out of his bunk.

"Still no," called Steve from the kitchen. "I'll let you know if it changes. Why don't you read a book or something?"

"Read a book," muttered Bucky, shaking his head. "Steve, you know I can't read," he yelled. "They only brought me on this mission for my looks."

Deciding that this didn't merit a response, Steve carried on sorting through their meal packets to find something vaguely edible for their lunch. He was just trying to decide between a hearty-looking vacuum-packed goulash and dehydrated mac n cheese, when Bucky sidled up next to him and rested his chin on his shoulder.

"Steve, I'm bored," he whined, his breath hot against Steve's neck.

"You haven't been bored at any point in the last year that I've known you," frowned Steve, shrugging Bucky's chin away. He tapped on the food parcels. "Which of these do you want for lunch?"

"Mac n cheese, Steve, obviously. God." With an exaggerated sigh, he flopped onto one of the seats and rested his head on the table.

"What's with you today?" grumbled Steve, tearing open the packet and mixing it with some boiling water in a bowl. "Is this how you deal with anxiety? It's irritating."

He didn't need to look over at Bucky to know that he was pouting. "Excuse me for worrying about whether or not we're going to _die in space_."

"Probe launches are very safe," Steve reminded him, softening as he slid over a bowl of something that vaguely resembled mac n cheese. "We've been doing them successfully for years."

Bucky picked at his dinner without enthusiasm, his brow still furrowed in worry.

"C'mon," said Steve softly, holding out his hand. "Bring your food and let's curl up and watch a movie, take your mind off things."

"I don't think that's gonna work."

"We can watch _The Little Mermaid_ ," he entreated. At this, Bucky finally cracked a small smile.

"I bet that line works on all the boys," he mumbled, nonetheless allowing himself to be pulled to his feet and lead by the hand to the crew's chambers.

* * *

Mission control was packed as the shuttle went through the final launch status checks. 

"Status checks complete," said Coulson into his headset. "We are go for launch. Launch in ten... nine..."

Daisy was chewing on a pencil so vigorously that she was showering wood splinters onto her shirt. May squeezed her shoulder.

"It's going to be OK," she whispered with uncharacteristic softness.

"Eight... seven..."

Quietly, Simmons slipped her hand into Fitz's and laced their fingers together, gripping tight.

"Six... five..."

Fury scanned over the papers in his folder for the tenth time, his speeches for either success or failure of the launch denoted by colored stickers.

"Four... three..."

On Mars, the silence in the Hab was deafening. The two astronauts crowded together at the console, thighs pressed close as they waited for any news of the launch. After an agonizing wait, the message flashed up on the screen.

**Nasa:** Probe has launched.

In the control room, Coulson leaned back against his chair and tipped his head backwards in relief as cheers erupted around him.

"We're getting a shimmy on the probe," said a launch technician urgently, breaking in through the celebrations.

"Status report," said Coulson, snapping back into action.

"There's a large precession, seventeen degrees on the long axis."

"We've lost signal, sir," said another tech, tapping at her keyboard urgently and not looking up from her screen.

"Signal lost over here, too."

"It's shaken loose," said Coulson with grim finality. "We're sure?"

"Affirmative."

He hung his head and set his jaw tightly. "Lock the doors."

* * *

Steve and Bucky stared at the console screen in grim disbelief.

**Nasa:** Launch failure. Probe disintegrated.

After a long silence, Bucky opened his mouth. "I bet my sister ten dollars that I wouldn't die on Mars," he said weakly.

Steve, head buried in his hands, started to laugh. Once he'd started, he found that he couldn't stop until he was in hysterics, gasping for breath. 

"Have you gone space-crazy?" asked Bucky, gently touching him on the shoulder. Steve's hand flew out to clutch at Bucky's chest as his chuckles subsided into giggles, which subsided into hiccups.

"Sorry," he said eventually, dragging a hand over his face. "I don't know where that came from. On the plus side, your sister has no way to chase you down for her winnings."

"Well, that sure is a comfort," said Bucky wryly. "You OK?"

"No, not at all. It would be weird if I were. I just..." He turned to face Bucky and brought his hand up to cup the back of his neck, stroking softly with his thumb. Bucky gave him a soft, broken smile in response. 

"I'm glad I got to spend this time with you," said Steve gently, looking into Bucky's eyes, then leaned in for a sweet and long-overdue kiss.

* * *

In the Wakandan capital, the king was gravely watching the director of Nasa answer questions from the press, feeling a huge amount of second-hand embarrassment through the screen. 

"The vibration of the shuttle liquified the protein cubes, making the load unbalanced and causing the shuttle to crash," said Fury, gripping his podium.

"Who made the decision to reduce the safety checks?" asked a reporter.

"That would be me," said Fury firmly.

King T'Challa sighed heavily. "Their astronauts will not survive. It is a great pity."

His sister, Shuri, was tapping out quick calculations on her tablet. "That is not so, brother," she said, frowning. "Not necessarily. Our Kimoyo probe would be capable of making the flight to Mars with very few modifications."

His head of security uncrossed her arms and peered at the mathematics. "This means that we will have to cancel our own plans."

"We can always build another probe, Okoye," insisted Shuri. "They cannot bring their astronauts back from the dead."

King T'Challa considered this for a moment before nodding his head. "Get Fury on the phone. Tell him that all is not lost." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I included a classic Chris Evans tit grab/laugh combo for flavour.


	9. Sol 225

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve smiled, then had a sudden thought. "How did the chat with your sister go?"
> 
> "She sent me a photo of her new baby, I told her it looked like Winston Churchill, and she told me she hopes I die in space, so, you know, normal sibling stuff."
> 
> "I do not know. At all," chuckled Steve, tying elastic around the bottom of Bucky's braid. "Check that in the mirror and tell me if I did it right."
> 
> "You're a natural at this, Stevie," grinned Bucky, checking himself out in the tiny mirror on the wall, half of his long hair swept up into a rudimentary but surprisingly neat French braid.

Now that he was allowed to kiss Steve whenever he wanted, Bucky found that he didn't much want to stop. When they woke up together, tangled in blankets in their shared bunk, he would start the day with long, slow, sweet kisses and caresses, culminating in the occasional sleepy handjob or morning tumble. He kissed the taste of strawberries out of his mouth whenever the plants bore fruit, and kissed the frown off his forehead whenever he started to fret about their situation. He pinned him to the wall in their shared laboratory space and kissed him until they were both breathless and grinding against each other, eager as teenagers to consummate their new-found relationship as creatively and frequently as possible.

Steve was no less affected, interrupting Bucky when he was in the middle of his work, or reading a book, to climb in his lap and kiss him thoroughly, rolling his hips until Bucky dropped whatever it was he was doing and made passionate love to him against the nearest flat surface. He gently kissed the tear tracks down Bucky's cheeks when he had to tell his sister that he might not make it home, and kissed the back of his neck when they were snuggled up together in bed watching movies.

Aside from the looming specter of their lonely deaths on a barren planet, they were having a lovely time.

"Babe, do you want your potatoes with protein cubes or with jerky?" asked Bucky one morning as he was bustling around the kitchen.

"I'm not hungry," said Steve, evading Bucky's probing gaze.

"No," said Bucky bluntly, tugging on his hand until he sat down and seating himself opposite, glaring into his eyes. "Is that your plan, dumbass? Give me all the rations because you're a self-sacrificing asshole?"

"I don't think it's possible to be both self-sacrificing and an asshole," joked Steve weakly, still not meeting his eye.

"Well, congratulations, you've achieved it. What am I supposed to do, sit here and watch you starve to death in front of my eyes?"

"Buck, I'm not-"

"Or is your plan to go outside without a helmet one day, make it quick and then leave me here on my own?" Steve chewed on his lip, looking guilty. "For fuck's sake, Steve, don't you think I had the same idea?"

Steve's head shot up and he grabbed at Bucky's hand. "Please, don't-"

"Unlike you," interrupted Bucky intensely, "I decided against it because I'm pretty sure I _fucking love you_ , and I would never do that to you."

"Buck, if we didn't have to split the rations two ways then you'd have a chance to make it until the next manned mission arrives," explained Steve, holding painfully tight to Bucky's hands.

"Not without you," hissed Bucky. "Believe me, if you get any stupid ideas in that thick head of yours about knocking yourself off to save me, _I will immediately kill myself after you out of sheer spite_ , don't think I wouldn't."

"I don't think anyone has _that_ much spite."

"My third grade teacher told me to stop drawing planets in my notebook because I wasn't smart enough to ever be an astronaut, and _now I'm on fucking Mars_. Do not test me, honey."

"OK, OK, Jesus."

"You promise?"

"I just don't want you to suffer," mumbled Steve.

"Yeah, asshole, I don't want to suffer either, that's why we're gonna sit tight and wait for Nasa to come up with something, OK? Together."

"Alright, I promise," said Steve, squeezing his hand and giving a sincere half-smile.

"Now eat your potatoes and shut up," insisted Bucky, pushing over a plate of microwaved food.

Picking up his fork, Steve set to eating his meal with renewed enthusiasm, before he paused with a potato half-way to his mouth, struck with a sudden thought. "Did you just tell me you love me?" he gasped.

"Shut _up_."

* * *

"The landers would take too long to put together," Shuri was saying on the videoconferencing screen in Nasa HQ, "but to crash-land the probe on the planet's surface would be perfectly effective."

Coulson cleared his throat. "We're still talking about halving the production schedule, even compared to how much we reduced the production time on the previous one," he said with a side-eyed glance at May.

"It's not impossible," she said reluctantly, "but it's not going to be easy."

"But it can be done?" clarified Fury.

She nodded. 

"Right. It still stretches their rations more thinly than is safe but it's our best option. I want you to-"

He was cut off as the door opened a crack and Fitz's head poked into the room.

"Hi, sorry to bother you all," he said politely, "but you should hang up the phone right now."

"Excuse me?" snapped Fury.

Simmons' head appeared over the top of Fitz's. "It's just that we've got something very important to- oh, hi, Shuri!" she said brightly, pushing open the door and pushing Fitz ahead in front of her. "Actually, don't hang up, you can help with this."

"Help with _what_?" said Fury, bristling with annoyance. "You do understand that I'm your boss and that I'm not known for my tolerance for stupid-ass interruptions?"

"We're aware of that, sir," said Fitz, pulling up some simulations on his tablet and throwing them up onto the screen above, "but I think you're going to want to hear what we've got to say."

"We can get the _Shield_ space craft back to Mars by Sol 560," said Simmons rapidly, gesturing at the screen to rotate the trajectories. "We use Earth for a gravity assist and turn straight back."

"It's a simple slingshot," added Fitz, "and it can enormously reduce the travel time. We intersect with the probe as the space craft passes by the Earth, re-stock with supplies, and get back to the astronauts before they run out of food."

Shuri considered this for a long moment and then nodded. "The booster technology in the _Kimoyo_ will not need so long a lead time if it does not have to make it all the way to Mars. It really is genius."

"Oh, it was mostly Fitz's idea," said Simmons modestly, just as Fitz said "Really it was Simmons who did the work."

"Right, yeah," amended Fitz. "I suppose it was mostly me." 

Simmons yelped in outrage. "Anyway," she continued, shooting him a look of pure indignation, "the only remaining issue is getting Rogers and Barnes to the _Shield_. If they can get all the way to the _Avenger IV_ site, they can use the aerial vehicle that's already there from the preparatory landing."

"The _Kimoyo_ probe is essential for this?" asked Fury.

"Yes, sir."

"So we can only do one of these plans," said Coulson thoughtfully.

"The three of you, get out of here," said Fury, gesturing vaguely at Fitzsimmons and Shuri on the screen.

"Why don't you come with us?" asked Simmons to Shuri, pulling the video call window onto her tablet. "We can talk about the docking procedure."

The three scientists carried on chattering at each other as they walked off down the corridor, interrupting and talking over one another without compunction.

"And you're certain that they're math geniuses?" asked Fury as soon as the door closed. May shrugged.

"Yes, sir," said Coulson firmly. 

* * *

**Sol 260**

"All you gotta do is take the outer strand and pass it over the other one into the center, then repeat on the other side," instructed Bucky from where he was sitting on the floor between Steve's legs.

"Like this?" fretted Steve, gingerly moving Bucky's hair.

"Yeah, I think that's - ouch!" yelped Bucky. "Don't pull so hard."

"I'm sorry, I've never done this before."

"Think yourself lucky you didn't grow up with a little sister, or this would have been your _life_."

Steve smiled, then had a sudden thought. "How did the chat with your sister go?"

"She sent me a photo of her new baby, I told her it looked like Winston Churchill, and she told me she hopes I die in space, so, you know, normal sibling stuff."

"I do not know. At all," chuckled Steve, tying elastic around the bottom of Bucky's braid. "Check that in the mirror and tell me if I did it right."

"You're a natural at this, Stevie," grinned Bucky, checking himself out in the tiny mirror on the wall, half of his long hair swept up into a rudimentary but surprisingly neat French braid.

"Sit back down," entreated Steve, catching Bucky by the hand and pulling him back down to rest on the floor by is feet. "I gotta do the other side." He pressed a kiss to the crown of Bucky's head, just because he could, and started to comb through the loose hair with his fingers. Bucky hummed contentedly and leaned into his embrace like a cat.

"I love you too, you know," murmured Steve, tenderly stroking Bucky's cheek.

"I know, you dumbass," said Bucky fondly. "Get back to work."

* * *

Fury was looking at the calculations in front of him with a furrowed brow.

"We'd be asking them to extend their mission by more than four hundred sols and risk their lives in the process," he said heavily.

"That is true, sir," replied Coulson, fiddling with his cufflinks, "but it would save Rogers and Barnes from another three hundred sols on a dangerous planet."

"So the choice is between a slim chance of safety for two of our astronauts or bringing the other four home to definite safety."

"This isn't our decision to make," said Coulson, his voice measured but speaking with feeling. "It should be up to the _Shield_ astronauts."

"We can't put that kind of pressure on them. I don't want them hearing about this."

"I wouldn't dream of it, sir."

* * *

Stark's mood had not improved in the months since discovering that he had left his crew members alive on Mars. If anything, he had become more withdrawn, and was inventing new devices in his lab at a frenetic pace, muttering to himself all the while.

On this particular morning, he was elbow deep into a project to interface a pulse sensor with the microwave so that whenever he got agitated it would automatically heat up a burrito for him when Barton came sliding down the ladder to interrupt him.

"New data dump from Nasa," he said brightly. "You coming?"

"Sure, why not," he sighed, traipsing up the ladder after him.

The rest of the crew were gathered around the console in the main living area, murmuring to each other as Romanoff scrolled through the new communications.

"Stark, you need to see this," said Romanoff as she opened an email from Coulson and trajectories scrolled up the screen.

He crowded over her shoulder and read out the title. "The FitzSimmons maneuver."


	10. Sol 266

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy was just finishing off a fairly passable burrito at her console in the control room, when something anomalous in the _Shield_ craft's trajectory started beeping on her monitor.
> 
> "Coulson," she called. "Come take a look at this."
> 
> He sauntered over to her work station in a way that was suspiciously casual. " _Shield_ is off course," he said, peering over her shoulder. "Huh. Weird."

Daisy was just finishing off a fairly passable burrito at her console in the control room, when something anomalous in the _Shield_ craft's trajectory started beeping on her monitor.

"Coulson," she called. "Come take a look at this."

He sauntered over to her work station in a way that was suspiciously casual. " _Shield_ is off course," he said, peering over her shoulder. "Huh. Weird."

She tapped a few queries into the console. "They've deliberately changed direction," she said, frowning. "They're off by 28 degrees."

"How long before the change is irreversible?"

"Twenty seconds! Should I use the control override? We should get Fury on the phone."

"Go take a break and get a coffee. I'll handle this."

"What? Coulson, what's-"

"Go to the break room," he repeated firmly. "I don't want you in the room when this happens."

She scurried off, looking back over her shoulder with concern, and he waved her off and turned back to the screen. A message from the space craft flashed up on his monitor.

 **Shield:** FitzSimmons is a steely-eyed missile man.

"They're a little confused, but they've got the spirit," he muttered to himself, and shut off the remote override.

* * *

**Sol 267**

"Steve!" called Bucky from the common room. "Steeeeeeeeve!"

"If this is about your theories about Star Wars I'm going to murder you," grumbled Steve, nonetheless emerging from his lab.

" _First_ of all, the design flaws in the Death Star were so terrible that there's no way they weren't done on purpose to destabilise the Empire..."

" _Bucky_."

"Oh, and second of all, we have a message from Coulson and it looks like we're not going to die in space."

" _What?_ "

"See, aren't you glad I called you in here?"

Shoving Bucky aside so that he fell, laughing, to the floor, Steve peered intensely at the console screen, then let out a delighted whoop on reading the details of the rescue plan.

"How the hell did he get that past Fury?" he wondered aloud.

"No idea," said Bucky, leaping up from the floor to grab Steve into a tight bear hug. Steve returned the gesture, letting go of a tension he hadn't been aware that he was holding.

"What are you gonna spend it on?" he asked, not letting go of his grip around Bucky's chest.

"Spend what on?"

"The ten dollars from your sister. You won the bet."

Bucky leaned his forehead on Steve's shoulder and giggled hysterically. "This is the best day ever. I get to go home _and_ I'm rich."

It took a while for them both to come down from their euphoric high on hearing the news, and if they spent a little bit of time triumphantly making out against the central console, that was between them and Mars.

Once they had settled into a more sober mood, they pulled up the maps and schematics for the journey to the _Avenger IV_ landing site, where the ascent vehicle that they would use to intercept the _Shield_ craft was already in place. They had already calculated that the journey to the crater would take around a hundred sols, but they needed to double check the power needs of the vehicle based on the weight of the rations that they had available, and their own current weights.

"Don't look," whined Bucky as he stood on the scales. "I'm carrying extra potato weight."

"According to this, you've lost three kilos since we got here," said Steve, distractedly checking the readout.

"Really?" said Bucky, opening one eye. "I don't know if that's actually better. Did it come off my thighs? Are my thighs less delicious than they used to be?" Forlornly, he started prodding at his own legs through his cargo pants.

"Your thighs are perfect," said Steve, elbowing him off the scales and taking his place. "Your concentration span could use some work."

"Thanks, Cap," said Bucky with a sparkling smile, shrugging off the criticism and accepting the compliment easily. "You've gained fifteen hundred grams," he commented, reading the display. "Have you been stealing my potatoes?"

"You know that if we account for gravity that's only-"

"I know, punk. I'm still keeping an eye on my meals from now on, you sneaky son of a-" He was cut off when Steve tackled him to the ground again, and he did not say anything more coherent for a long time.

* * *

"Flowers," said Bucky later, murmuring into the back of Steve's neck as they held each other close.

"Muh?" mumbled Steve, still slightly out of breath and not entirely in possession of his wits.

"I'm gonna spend my ten dollars buying you fancy gas station flowers."

"I'll put out either way, you know."

"Shaddup."

* * *

"Pepper, baby, how long are you gonna stay mad at me?" wheedled Stark, stroking the video screen with his thumb.

Pepper narrowed her eyes and threw up her hands in the air. "A while, Tony!"

"It was the right thing to-"

" _Hundreds more days in space_ ," she hissed. "Why do you always have to be the hero?"

"I look good in superhero tights."

"I'm not-" she started, then a little voice cut in.

"Mommy, I wanna talk to him."

"OK, pumpkin. Get up here." Morgan climbed onto her mother's lap and beamed at the screen.

"Are you bringing me back a present?" she said without preamble.

"Of course! I went straight to the Mars gift shop and got you a t-shirt the moment I got there, squirt."

"Are you sure you didn't meet any aliens? You can tell me," she whispered, leaning in towards the screen. "I'll keep it a secret."

"No, we didn't meet any-"

"There were a whole bunch of little green men," broke in Romanoff, peering at the screen over Stark's shoulder. "I'll tell you all about it when we get home, OK?"

Morgan turned the full force of her five-year-old disapproval on her father. "See, _some_ people know how to tell the truth."

* * *

**Sol 314**

Coulson was striding around the control room in the Wakandan capital and trying very hard to ignore Fury's eyes boring into the back of his head. 

"Johnson, is Barton in position?" he asked, stopping behind Daisy's console.

"He's suited up and tethered to the docking port, ready to guide in the probe."

May and Okoye were wearing matching expressions of skepticism as Fitz and Simmons tried earnestly to explain to them why the new docking system they had invented would have been better than the one presently on the _Shield_ craft.

"The pre-flight checks are complete. _Kimoyo_ is ready to launch," called Shuri from the other end of the room.

"OK, on my mark."

Up on the _Shield_ craft, which was at its closest point to earth in its slingshot trajectory, Romanoff was watching the scanner intensely, her feet up on the console. "Barton, are you ready for this?"

"Sure am," he drawled over the comms, tugging on his tether line to make sure it was in place. "What's even on this thing?"

"If Coulson's a man of his word, a buttload of protein cubes and enough peanut butter to last me the whole mission."

"Can I have some of your peanut butter?"

"Let's see how well you do at catching the probe, then we'll talk."

"If you wouldn't mind keeping quiet for just a moment," said Banner evenly, "I'd like to concentrate on steering this thing."

Ignoring Stark, who was pulling faces behind his head, Banner carefully maneuvered the craft and the probe until they were in alignment. Barton finished the job by fastening the docking apparatus in place, then switching on the airlock. By the time the rest of the crew reached the dock, he had taken off his helmet and gloves and was wrist deep in a vacuum sealed packet of peanut butter.

* * *

**Sol 344**

Time passed surprisingly quickly as Steve and Bucky made their preparations for the journey to the crater. The logistical difficulties of the long trek were sorted out fairly rapidly with Nasa's input, and they stacked the rations and supplies for the jeep in one of the empty bunks, ready to load when required. The smaller solar panels were serviced and ready to hook up to Dum-E, and the second rover had been repurposed to use as a trailer for the water reclaimer, the oxygenator and the atmospheric regulator.

The only remaining problem was how to get the launch vehicle high enough above the planet's surface to intercept with _Shield_.

"What the fuck do they mean, _replace the panelling with canvas_?" Bucky was hissing at the monitor. "We're not going _fucking camping_."

"FitzSimmons say it's the only way to make the aerial vehicle light enough," explained Steve, nonetheless still looking rather worried as he chewed on his lip.

"Oh, well, if _FitzSimmons_ say so," grumbled Bucky, aiming a moody kick at a nearby chair.

"Buck."

"Can't we just live on Mars forever? This launch plan is scary as hell."

"When we get back to Earth I can make you some toast," wheedled Steve, slipping his hand into Bucky's.

"Great, I'm gonna be launched into space without the life support or the control panel in a _gazebo_ , but at least I get some hot, buttery..." He stared off into space for a moment, considering. "OK, I'm coming around to the idea."

* * *

**Sol 412**

"I can't believe it," said Bucky, staring wide-eyed at the lab supply cupboard.

"Can't believe what?" said Steve, not looking up from his experiment.

"We're out of pipette tips. We've used up every pipette tip on this entire planet."

"Does that mean you're going to stop analysing my bodily fluids?"

"Officially, yeah," grinned Bucky, giving up his search and hooking his chin over Steve's shoulder to run his hands over his ribcage. "I might make some non-quantitative observations of some of them, though."

Steve rolled his eyes. "For the record, that's not the most disgusting double-entendre you've ever used, but it's got some stiff competition."

"Speaking of stiff..."

"You're so _gross_."

* * *

**Sol 460**

It is remarkably difficult, but not impossible, to make love inside a tiny jeep. Ten days into their journey to the Schiaparelli crater, the two astronauts had discovered that having to pause every few hours to charge the solar panels left a _lot_ of time for experimentation.

"Buck," said Steve urgently, pulling on his hair. Making a questioning noise, Bucky lifted his mouth off of Steve's cock with a pop.

"What?"

"You've got your elbow on the handbrake."

"Fuck!" He righted himself and pulled on the handbrake, stopping the rover that had started to roll down the hill. "Oops. Damn, imagine if we'd died and future Martian archaeologists would have found my corpse with your dick in its mouth."

"I'm gonna go ahead and not imagine that, doll."

* * *

**Sol 540**

"No," said Steve flatly, turning off the speakers.

"C'mon, just one more," wheedled Bucky, making his most ridiculous puppy-dog eyes. "Just one more episode."

"I can't listen to true crime podcasts any more, Buck, they're gonna give me nightmares."

"Well we're sure as hell not listening to any more of your goddamn trumpet music," huffed Bucky, putting his feet up on the dashboard. Steve scowled at him until he put them down again.

"Do you want to play 'eye spy' again?" coaxed Steve after a while.

"I spy with my little eye... _a bunch of fucking rocks_ ," huffed Bucky, folding his arms across his chest.

"Buck."

"I wish we could play the license plate game. I'm _unbeatable_ at the license plate game."

He lapsed into petulant silence until Steve, having a sudden idea, carefully took one hand off the wheel to swipe at the screen and pull up a song.

"Didn't know what time it was," he sang along with the music, shooting a side-eyed glance at Bucky. "Lights were lo-o-ow..."

Bucky's exasperated eye rolls were followed by reluctant smiles, which were followed by him belting out the rest of the lyrics to _Starman_ at the top of his voice within a few seconds. 

As they rounded a corner, in the distance under the harsh Martian sun, the landing site shone like a beacon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I looked up the background to the "steely-eyed missile man" line while I was writing this and it's [actually really interesting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Aaron).


	11. Sol 550

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hey there, kiddos," said Stark, irritatingly chipper. "Ready for some fun?"
> 
> "Good to hear your voice, Tony," said Steve. "I hope you can get us out of here in one piece."
> 
> "Yeah, good luck shooting us into the atmosphere in a fucking tent," said Bucky, eying the flimsy canvas roof of the MAV with distrust.
> 
> "Chillax, Buck-o. All you gotta do is sit tight and let Banner fly this thing, then the two of you can lay about eating peanut butter till we get back to earth."
> 
> "That's my peanut butter," broke in Romanoff, "and Barton's already eaten half of it, so you will have to physically wrestle me for it."

"Tony, what are you doing?" asked Banner, sliding down the ladder into the crew's quarters, where Stark was attaching a sheet to the top of a bunk.

"Nesting," he said indistinctly through the screws he was holding between his lips. He spat them out into his hand and made a face at the taste. "My prodigal sons are coming home, I want them to live in luxury."

"But why the privacy curtains?"

"They just spent like a year and a half stuck on Mars together. I don't imagine they're going to want to catch sight of each other for the whole journey home."

"Maybe they'll hate each other less now they've had to work together for so long."

"Au contraire," he replied, tapping on Banner's shoulder with his screwdriver. "Cap once ranted at me for fifteen straight minutes when he caught Barnes doing somersaults too close to his lab supplies. Barnes happened to walk by and overhear and then he followed him around for the rest of the afternoon making fart noises. They nearly came to blows, it was hilarious. Imagine that, for months, on Mars."

Banner paused for a minute to consider. "I'm gonna go see if Barton still has those noise-canceling headphones," he said, and ambled out of the room.

* * *

"I can't even look at you, Steve, turn around," said Bucky, holding a hand over Steve's face and pushing him away.

Steve continued giggling and then made another loud farting sound into his elbow, making Bucky collapse back into hysterical laughter again. 

"You're killing me, c'mon," gasped Bucky, holding his aching sides. Their unstoppable laughter-cycle had been going on for several minutes. Every once in a while, it would die out and they would get control of themselves, before catching sight of each other's faces and starting the whole cycle over again. It was genuinely becoming difficult to breathe, and in the confined quarters of the rover there was no way for them to walk away and cool off.

"Steve!" Bucky managed to gasp. "I never thought I'd have to say this, but I think you need to concentrate more seriously on our mission."

"OK, OK," giggled Steve, scrubbing his hands over his face. "OK," he repeated, more seriously. "Can you bring up the specs for the MAV?"

"Here," said Bucky, shifting to show Steve the screen, unthinkingly throwing an arm over his shoulders. Steve snuggled a little closer and squinted at the schematics. 

"So we've got rid of the extra chairs, and the life support, and most of the shielding. Now we just have to get rid of the control module and the nose, and put up the canvas."

"I figure we should do nose and canvas last so we don't get sand all up in everything."

"Roger that," said Steve, then burst out laughing again.

* * *

**Sol 560**

**Operation Rogers-Barnes Rescue**

Covering the nose of the vehicle in Hab canvas had involved, Bucky took pains to point out, precisely the same steps as putting up a marquee for a church fête. 

"I'm just saying, if we had some bunting..." he said as he helped Steve into his suit on the morning of their departure.

"Look, bake me a pound cake or shut up," said Steve, wriggling his feet into the shoes. 

"Oh, you're gonna sass me like that on our last day on Mars?"

"If it ain't broke..." smirked Steve, grabbing Bucky's helmet and clicking it into place on his suit, then kissing the visor. Bucky followed suit and then, after their safety checks, they were ready to leave the rover and make their way over to the MAV, walking on the planet's surface for the last time.

They took a moment to look across the vast, craggy landscape, the red rocks and sand stretching away towards the horizon. Their home for over a year - inhospitable, dangerous, and beautiful. 

Steve clapped Bucky on the shoulder, and they carried on up the ladder into the MAV. After buckling themselves into the seats, Bucky flipped a switch on the comms and the speakers crackled into life.

"Hey there, kiddos," said Stark, irritatingly chipper. "Ready for some fun?"

"Good to hear your voice, Tony," said Steve. "I hope you can get us out of here in one piece."

"Yeah, good luck shooting us into the atmosphere in a fucking tent," said Bucky, eying the flimsy canvas roof of the MAV with distrust.

"Chillax, Buck-o. All you gotta do is sit tight and let Banner fly this thing, then the two of you can lay about eating peanut butter till we get back to earth."

"That's my peanut butter," broke in Romanoff, "and Barton's already eaten half of it, so you will have to physically wrestle me for it."

"Glad you haven't lost your fighting spirit, Romanoff."

"OK," said Stark. "We're gonna run through the pre-flight checks, then we should be ready to rumble."

"Copy that," said Steve. He took a shaky breath in through his nose and exhaled slowly, willing his racing heart to calm down. He felt a tap on his hand and looked up to see Bucky threading their fingers together, a little clumsily in his bulky gloves, and giving him a crooked smile. Consciously making the effort to relax, he squeezed Bucky's hand and they shared a silent joint freak-out for just a moment.

"Fuel Pressure, green," said Banner. "Engine alignment, perfect. Communications, five by five."

"Thanks, Banner the Vampire Slayer," muttered Stark. "Capcom is go. Remote command?"

"Go," replied Banner, pulling out the joystick from the console. 

"Recovery?"

"Go," said Barton, floating in his space suit just inside the docking port.

"Secondary recovery?"

"Go," said Romanoff, tethering herself in behind Barton.

"Pilot?"

"Go," said Steve, giving Bucky's hand one last squeeze and then gripping onto his arm rest.

"Ballast?"

"Go," ground out Bucky, jaw clenched.

"Ten... nine... eight... seven... six..." said Banner through the speakers. The roar of the engines was increasingly deafening in the tiny cockpit of the MAV. Bucky squeezed his eyes shut, heart pounding in fear.

"Five... four... three... two... one..."

The acceleration was immediately overwhelming as the rocket blasted away from the ground, and the two astronauts were pinned to their seats, struggling to draw in a breath as the G-force pounded their bodies. After a few seconds, Steve's body went limp.

"What's your status, MAV?" said Stark's voice.

"Ha, Cap's passed out, what a lightweight," said Bucky, sounding strained, before abruptly falling unconscious himself.

Over their heads, the canvas on the nose of the launch vehicle rippled alarmingly, under strain from the G-force, before being ripped off entirely, leaving them completely exposed and slowing their ascent.

"Barnes, do you read me?" said Stark urgently. "Banner, what's going on?"

"I'm having trouble steering this thing," he replied between gritted teeth. 

"Velocity's at 741 meters per second. Altitude 1350 meters," Stark read from the console.

"That's way too low," said Romanoff.

"No shit," muttered Stark. "Main shutdown in three... two... one..."

The engines on the launch vehicle shut off, leaving the MAV floating on momentum towards the _Shield_ craft.

"Back to automatic guidance," said Banner. "Confirm shutdown."

"The intercept velocity is fine," read Stark, tapping on the console, "but the distance... the distance is gonna be 68 kilometers."

There was a silence, and then Bucky's voice cut through the silence.

"What the fuck?"

"Barnes, glad you've joined us, we're having a teensy snafu with the intercept," said Stark. "Rogers there with you?"

"He's still unconscious."

Stark snorted. "What a loser. Right, people, we've gotta work the problem. Barnes, what if you cut a hole in the hand on your glove and then you could fly around using the atmospheric pressure like-"

"No."

"You're no fun."

"Atmospheric pressure," said Banner slowly. "We could use the atmospheric pressure in-"

"I'm not cutting a fucking hole in my suit, Banner."

"No, but what if we burned some fuel to travel to the intercept point, then used the atmospheric pressure in _Shield_ to slow the velocity afterwards."

"You want to blow the other airlock," said Stark, snapping his fingers. "We're not gonna need it for the rest of the journey."

"Yeah."

Stark let out a hoot and pushed away from his console to run towards the kitchen. "I'm making a bomb. Romanoff, get to the vehicle dock."

"Aye, aye," said Romanoff immediately, pushing her way out of the airlock and clambering around the outside of the craft.

Humming to himself, Stark assembled a glass vessel, a stopper, some liquid oxygen, all of the sugar that they had on board, and half of an electrical cable. He made short work of the construction, then raced to the airlock, where Romanoff was already waiting inside the repressurized chamber. His trembling hands stuck the plug into a panel on the wall, getting it upside down at first and cursing whatever moron invented USB ports.

"Here," he said, gingerly handing her the bomb. "Stick it to the inside door and make sure to be outside before we switch it on, OK?"

"Sure thing," she said, shooing him out the door and closing it behind him. Stark hurried back to the control room, checking that the doors were closed along the way.

"I'm back in position and out of the blast zone," said Romanoff over the comms after a few minutes.

"Sixty seconds until intercept," read Banner. "We need to blow the airlock within twenty."

"OK," said Stark, staring intensely at the screen. "Prepare for deceleration. Activating panel in three... two... one..."

The explosion was silent, the force of the air rushing through the airlock making no noise in the quiet vacuum of space. The impact pushed Banner and Stark back into their seats, jolting the air from their lungs, and left Romanoff and Barton slammed against the wall like bugs.

"Intercept velocity twelve meters per second," read Banner. Barton cheered, peeling himself off the fuselage. "Distance three hundred meters." Barton went abruptly silent.

"Three hundred meters?" said Bucky's incredulous voice through the speakers. 

Inside the MAV, Bucky had been carefully attaching Steve's suit to his, using as many carabiners as he could find to get them firmly tethered together while the other astronaut slumped, still unconscious, a little trickle of blood streaming from where his forehead had hit the visor during acceleration.

"Uh, I only have two hundred meters of tether here," said Barton. "I guess I could unclip-"

"Negative," said Bucky firmly, steeling himself. "I'm doing the stupid glove thing."

Stark whooped over the speakers.

"Shut up," grunted Bucky, unfastening his and Steve's seat belts and making his way through the little gap at the nose of the vessel. Orienting himself with the new bulky mass of Steve strapped to his front, he grabbed a knife from his side pocket and, holding his breath, cut a hole in his glove. The force of the atmospheric pressure forcing it way out of the little hole sent them whooshing sideways abruptly until he closed his fist. Looking up, he fixed his eyes on the _Shield_ craft and nodded once.

"OK, I'm making my way up to you," he said. "Barton, meet you in the middle?"

"Roger that, Barnes," said Barton, gunning his jets and speeding towards the ascent vehicle. 

"Hang in there, Stevie," muttered Bucky to himself. Carefully, he opened up his hand and, after a few false starts and more accidental barrel rolls than he was proud of, started to make his way towards Barton.

"Intercept distance eleven meters," said Banner over the comms. "Five meters. Two meters..."

Bucky stretched out his hand towards Barton's, reaching across the vacuum of space as their bodies sailed closer... closer... closer... and missed each other by bare millimeters, tumbling past one another. He grabbed at Barton's tether, wrapping it around his arm and spinning around until the three astronauts were tangled in the fabric like a giant cat's cradle. 

Once Barton managed to get his arms around both of them, he breathed a sigh of relief and called out over his microphone.

"Pull us in."

The cacophony of cheers over the speakers was almost deafening. Romanoff wasted no time in reeling them in and unclipping them all from each other.

"Houston," said Stark. "This is Shield. We got 'em."

The second the airlock had cleared, Bucky pulled off his helmet and made short work of Steve's.

"Barnes, let me-" started Barton, but Bucky elbowed him out of the way and started to inspect the wound on Steve's head. Steve began to stir, opening his eyes with a groan.

"Hey, handsome," said Bucky, stroking the side of his face as he blinked into consciousness. "You feeling OK? You might have a concussion."

"Get me up," said Steve indistinctly, flapping his arms. "Up to kneeling, thanks," he said as Barton complied. He pulled out one knee in front of him, wincing at the effort, then gestured vaguely at his right hip. "Can you open up this pocket and get out what's inside it?"

"Steve, what are you-" started Bucky, then cut off with a gasp as Barton retrieved a sad little ring made out of copper wire twisted together.

"I didn't know your ring size," said Steve sheepishly. "I hope it fits."

"Are you-"

"Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes," he said, looking completely ridiculous with blood trickling down the side of his face from where his head smashed against the helmet, still mildly delirious from the G-force, holding out the makeshift ring. Teddy Bearington's head, a little sweaty for having been nestled between Steve's tits for the ascent, was peeking out from the neck of his suit. "Will you do the honor of becoming my husband?"

"I think he definitely has a concussion," said Barton, looking concerned.

"Yes," said Bucky, ignoring Barton and dropping to his knees to take Steve's face in his hands. "Yes, of course I will." Their kiss was messy, a little bloody, and slightly difficult to maneuver due to the space suits that they were still wearing, but it was perfect.

Returning with a med kit and the rest of the crew in tow, Romanoff paused at the door and cleared her throat.

"They've gone space crazy," gasped Stark, peering over her shoulder. "We have to put them in quarantine."

"You're not invited to the wedding," said Bucky indistinctly. 

"Now, now, boys," drawled Romanoff, pulling out some alcohol wipes from the med kit and dabbing at Steve's head wound, making him wince. "Let's not fall out on day one of the journey home."

Steve opened his eyes and peered blearily at the assembled astronauts, crowded around him in the tiny airlock, then reached out to grab Bucky's hand.

"Thanks for coming back for us," he said simply, then passed out again.


	12. Five Years Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The leaves outside his open window were rustling in the green space around their little home as Steve graded papers at his desk. After the vast, empty silence of space that they'd known for so long, the noises on Earth had been overwhelming at first, leaving them both completely nonplussed for their first few days back planet-side. 
> 
> Now, it would be strange to wake up in the morning without the sound of birds in the trees outside their bedroom window, the rustle of the branches, or the sound of rainfall. All the signs and sounds of their life on Earth.

The leaves outside his open window were rustling in the green space around their little home as Steve graded papers at his desk. After the vast, empty silence of space that they'd known for so long, the noises on Earth had been overwhelming at first, leaving them both completely nonplussed for their first few days back planet-side. 

Now, it would be strange to wake up in the morning without the sound of birds in the trees outside their bedroom window, the rustle of the branches, or the sound of rainfall. All the signs and sounds of their life on Earth.

"Babe!" called Bucky's voice from the living room, where Steve knew without looking that he was sprawled out over the couch covered by their two large dogs, both of whom firmly believed that they were tiny chihuahuas rather than fairly hefty labradors. "It's time!"

He grabbed his coffee cup and padded along the corridor to slide onto the other side of the couch and immediately have his lap be claimed by seventy pounds of dog. Bucky gave him an effervescent smile and wriggled closer, twining their hands together. On the TV, the _Avenger IV_ ascent vehicle was preparing to launch.

"You ever wish we were on that rocket?" asked Bucky, contentedly snuggling into his chest.

Steve hummed, considering. "My favorite thing about being in space was bein' with you, doll," he said, pressing a kiss into the top of Bucky's head. "I got that right here and I don't even have to nearly die."

"Well, except that one time."

"I know you didn't give me food poisoning on _purpose_."

"You keep thinkin' that," said Bucky, patting the side of Steve's face.

On the TV, the countdown had begun.

_"Ten... nine..."_

In the control room, Fury was pacing back and forth. He paused behind Daisy's console.

"Planning to get them all back at once this time, sir?" she asked, feeling his eyes on the back of her neck.

"You just concentrate on the getting them there, Johnson."

"Sure thing."

_"Eight... seven..."_

On a beach in Tahiti, Coulson tapped May on the shoulder and handed her a margarita as big as her head. 

"You're watching the launch, aren't you?" he asked, catching her as she squirreled away her phone in her pocket.

"No," she insisted, too quickly, and took a sip of her drink, a secret smile playing around her lips.

"Go on, I want to see too," he said, sitting down next to her on the lounger. She rested her head on his shoulder, and they settled down together to watch.

_"Six... five..."_

The new docking system for the rocket to rendezvous with the shuttle craft had been almost entirely designed by FitzSimmons, and they were guests of great honor in the control room as the entire staff anxiously waited for the launch to commence - a fact which they would have really appreciated if they were not holed up in a quiet corner, frantically kissing.

"Weren't we supposed to be doing something?" said Simmons, pausing for air.

"If it was important we'd have remembered," said Fitz breathlessly, then leaned in for another kiss.

_"Four... three..."_

Strapped into their seats aboard the _Avenger IV_ launch rocket, Romanoff and Barton both brought up their bulky gloves to bump fists.

"You gonna let me eat some of the peanut butter this time?" he asked.

She smirked. "Keep dreaming."

_"Two... one..."_

"Are you ready for lift-off, pumpkin?" asked Tony. Morgan, a self-possessed young woman of ten entire years old, fixed him with a scathing look. "Sorry," he amended. "Are you ready for lift-off, _Captain_ pumpkin?"

She beamed and flipped some switches on her home-made control board. The lights on the miniature rocket ship began to hum to life.

Pepper and Bruce, sharing a pot of green tea from a safe distance at the other end of the garden, shouted encouragement.

"We have lift-off," she announced as the thrusters ignited and the whole assembly was propelled away from the ground. "First stage boosters disengaging."

"Hey!" yelped Tony as the detached boosters fell from the sky and narrowly missed his head. 

"I told you to wear a helmet, dad."

"And ruin this perfectly coiffed hairstyle? I think not, honey bear." He looped an arm around his daughter's shoulders and together they watched the rocket ascending into the atmosphere. "I'm proud of you, love-bug," he said quietly, pressing a kiss into her hair.

_"Lift off!"_

On the screen of Bucky and Steve's TV, the _Avenger IV_ rocket thrust into the air. Bucky squeezed Steve's hand tighter, and raised their joined hands to his lips to press a kiss onto Steve's wedding band.

"Do you think they'll be OK up there?" he asked quietly.

Steve brushed his lips against Bucky's temple. "Sure they will. What could go wrong?"

**The End __**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for staying with me through this whole journey. I enjoyed writing this so much and it's given me an even greater appreciation for the original story, which I already thought was pretty rad.


End file.
